Another delay in the research. Astellas is making changes to the stem cell line they are going to be using. That adds at least two months to the wait time. At least. Yippee.
What does ‘changes’ mean? No clue at all. I read a little and it sounds like some changes that can be made are to the culture in which the stem cells are grown. This is done so the cells are better nourished and grow better. It is also possible to ‘massage’ the cells themselves to make them better able to do the job they will be used for. I am not a scientist and I have no idea what they will be doing.
The assumption is they will try to make the cells better, more robust and adaptable. In the long run this is a good thing. In the short run they was frustrating the devil out of me!
Since it is starting to look like these people are going to drag their feet forever, or at least until I am very old and probably very blind, I decided to once again search for alternatives. Lin came up with the website for the Federation for Fighting Blindness. They have a registry for people with retinal disease. Lin did a post on it; maybe you remember [if you don’t just click here].
The registry is sort of a dating site for people with retinal disease to meet eligible researchers. Sort of like Low Vision Match or Blind Mingle: “Attractive, female, wet AMD wanting to meet intelligent researcher who will only have eyes for her. Only those with successful animal trials need apply!” You get the gist. [Lin/Linda here: to be clear, neither LowVisionMatch.com or BlindMingle.com exist…yet ;)]
I have gotten as far as completing the form and submitting it. Completing the application was not hard but it was long. The main problem was I could not pinch-zoom the screen on my iPad and was stuck with using the zoom feature from the accessibility menu.
I would think if you are asking for information from a visually impaired population you should include pinch-zoom capability in your site. But then, who am I?
I am not expecting to hear about available research any time soon. It would be nice but I am not expecting quick results. I will let you know if I hear from them. I will also let you know if I suddenly start getting ads for eye vitamins and white canes. Tacky, tacky if that should happen.
I will be the guinea pig for this one. If anyone finds a different registry, maybe you could sign up and we can compare notes on them. Who knows? Some of us might end up with matches made in Heaven!